Despite the Las Vegas floor of CES 2012 being filled with new smartphones, the iPhone is still hot with prospective handset buyers, a new survey finds. The iPhone tops the list with 54 percent of consumers planning to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days. That’s down from 65 percent in September, a surprise to experts. The nearest Android handset cam in a distant second.“Apple has never dominated smartphone planned buying to this extent more than two months after a major new release,” ChangeWave Research announced today. By comparison, Samsung was the best-showing Android brand with 13 percent of potential smartphone buyers expected to purchase phones made by the South Korean firm.

The percentage of consumers surveyed who picked Samsung as their likely next smartphone nearly tripled from 5 percent registered in September. The research firm said the credit goes to the Galaxy Nexus, a smartphone powered by Android 4.0 and the iPhone’s strongest competitor.

ChangeWave also found Motorola was the No. 3 choice with 7 percent smartphone buyers. Second-place HTC fell to 3 percent, down from 6 percent in September, while BlackBerry-maker RIM slipped to 2 percent of potential smartphone purchases, down from 3 percent previously.

Apple also topped other smartphone makers for customer satisfaction. According to the December survey, 75 percent of iPhone owners reported they were “very satisfied” with the device. The gap between the iPhone and Android was again obvious. Samsung provided Android’s best showing as 47 percent of survey participants, giving the Galaxy Nexus maker a “very satisfied” rating. RIM agains came in at the bottom of the barrel with 22 percent of those asked saying they were “very satisfied” with the BlackBerry maker.

It should be mentioned that Samsung jumped up 8%, from 5% to 13%. So, while the amount of people wanting iPhones dipped 11%, the interest in Samsung jumped 8% and Motorola interest jumped 2%.

ddevito

talk about flame bait

ddevito

“Apple also topped other smartphone makers for customer satisfaction…”

I love how you had to throw that in there to prevent iSheep from jumping off a bridge

FriarNurgle

*grabs the mic*I’m going to let you finish, but iPhone 5 is going to be the best phone ever.

ddevito

depends on who you ask.

The iPhone is perfect for non geeks – a smartphone for anyone. It runs great. I had an OG Droid since 2009 and waited to see what the mighty iPhone 5 would bring (I own Apple devices). I had an iPhone 3G on AT&T before switching to Verizon in 2009. I liked it a lot but never loved it.

If you were a kid who needed your hand help through life then the iPhone is for you. If you were like me and had to take everything apart that you owned, then Android is for you.

DaveDann

It will be hell on earth after new iPhone 5 release…let apple better have the biggest stock ever taken care of…tribute to Steve Jobs…

About the author

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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